According to McKinsey, 7 of the top 12 largest companies by market capitalization — Alibaba, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tencent — are Ecosystem players. CEOs are recognizing the market power they can unlock by building and leveraging a strong partner ecosystem. In turn, top industry analysts and investment firms see the emergence of a new category of Ecosystem Cloud, being led by WorkSpan, that helps companies build and grow their partner ecosystems.We’re proud that our leadership in this space has resulted in $27 Million in Series B funding led by Redline Capital in London. Mayfield, who steered our Series A funding, and Microsoft’s venture funding organization, M12 Ventures, also participated in this funding round. “WorkSpan has created a solution that is category-defining in an industry that has been ripe for disruption,” said Nicolas Giuli, Partner at Redline Capital, “The WorkSpan Ecosystem Cloud platform has been attracting major brands in the high-tech space to grow their ecosystem participation on the WorkSpan network.”“We are thrilled to expand on our original investment in WorkSpan,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund, “It’s been exciting to see WorkSpan transforming the industry, growing from our days as an early investor. We have complete confidence in the team WorkSpan has assembled to continue to deliver on these major opportunities in the market.”“WorkSpan makes it easier to build, market and sell together, changing the dynamic in building active and engaged ecosystems of partners,” said Leo de Luna, Managing Director at M12. “With this investment, M12 is excited to continue the company’s ongoing commitment to help the hundreds of thousands of partners in the Microsoft partner ecosystem grow business.”The traditional alliance management model is changing and according to Accenture, 46%of executives are actively seeking ecosystems and new business models. Forward-looking investment firms have recognized that trend and are backing WorkSpan’s vision. With this new funding, WorkSpan is poised to deliver outstanding results by helping customers stay ahead of the competition and leveraging their partner ecosystems for growth.
Chip is passionate about building strong communities and ecosystems around enterprises to build excitement for the category, deliver value for customers, and grow the business. Prior to WorkSpan, Chip was with SAP for over 13 years, most recently growing the SAP Community Network to over 2 million engaged customers, partners, and developers. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and an engineering degree from Northwestern.
